144 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

irritated me. I wanted to eat my lunch and get away,
but it was nearly an hour before the carriers began to
stumble in, tired and stubborn, suspicious and com-
plaining. Alfred went round among them, urging
them to rebel, gathering evidence from the villagers
as to how far Duogobmai was.

But I still persisted in believing that they were
wrong. I was without experience. All the white men
I had met in Sierra Leone had told me how blacks
must be driven, how they lied and humbugged, and
it was not unnatural that I should believe they were
lying now, 'trying it on', like schoolboys who are test-
ing a new master's discipline. And as a weak master
who knows his own weakness bluffs it out with a new
form, unable to recognise who is truthful and who is
not, alienating the honest by classing them with the
dishonest, I became all the more stubborn. I ate my
food very fast, so that the men might have only a
short rest, I told Vande to make Alfred one of my
cousin's hammock-carriers so that he might be forced
to work, I wouldn't listen to their arguments.

Laminah said softly behind my chair, "Amedoo's
feet very bad."

At least I had the good sense not to alienate my
servants, I depended on them for any comfort that
could be wrung out of the country; it was they who,
however tired they were, saw first to putting up our
beds and chairs, to preparing our food, to boiling
water for the filter. I said, "If his foot's really bad,
we'll stay/'

Laminah said, "Amedoo go on. He say he no hum-
bug."

"It'll be only three hours from here," I said. "Only